New investigator support is requested for an examination of how treatment and extratreatment factors, including life stressors, social resources, and coping responses, influence the course of alcoholism. The role of such factors in the processes of recovery and relapse will be examined in a short-term (6 months) longitudinal study of three comparison groups: (a) sixty alcoholics entering treatment for alcohol abuse, (b) sixty matched active alcoholics who do not receive treatment for alcohol abuse, and (c) sixty sociodemographically matched nonalcoholic community controls. Conceptual issues addressed include controlled group comparisons of the levels of stressors, social resources, and coping responses and their relationships to alcohol abuse and personal functioning. The longitudinal design will permit analyses of the predictive associations of these factors with recovery and relapse at follow-up. Rates of recovery will be compared for treated and untreated alcoholics. Social-environmental risk factors for relapse will be identified along with characterizations of those who experience posttreatment stressors yet do not relapse. The mediating roles of life stressors and coping resources will be considered in determining why some alcoholics who do not enter treatment are able to arrest their alcoholism. Since conceptually-based, integrated measures of stressors, social resources, and coping responses are not available, a structured assessment procedure will first be developed. Pilot testing of the assessment procedure and a preliminary empirical trial to establish internal consistency of subscales, reliability, and concurrent validity are included in the measure development stage.